meeting leadership requirement
We are looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.
(minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)
To me an effective leader is someone who has an inspiring vision for future. He should be able to motivate and influence people to engage with his vision. He has to be humble and strong at the same time.
Throughout my life I have been part of various successful projects. As a student I was an active member of management for various student events. I have led a team of fund raisers. As a professional I executed Go Green Project of WWF in my office. These experiences have made me a strong decision maker and equipped me with skills such as people management, relationship building, delegation and empowerment which are prerequisites of leadership
After my graduation I joined a Project named World Food Bank. This project focused on providing meals for the poorest people in Pakistan and relied on teams of volunteers for raising funds. Since I had done an online course of fund raising I was made the leader of a team of 5.
I started the work with collaborative decision making and asked each member to give his input for achieving the goal. Being the leader I took the initiative to speak my mind out and eased nerves of others. My idea was "Give Something Back to the Donor" to engage the donor and build credibility. I suggested designing a ticket with a monetary value of Rs. 50. The whole plan was to sell tickets to donors to give them a feeling accomplishment. This idea was readily accepted and others also hopped in with their inputs. We ended up with a lot of innovative ideas for fund raising such as, Visiting universities and organizations to engage local public in this noble cause.
The next steps were, designing Material, preparing speech, scheduling visits and collecting funds. I gave specific task to each member depending upon his interest and expertise in the relevant task. Doing my fair share of work, I wrote the speech.
Within a Week we were able to start the field work. I created sub teams of two and three for the visits. My team went to Punjab University. My team mate showed interest of delivering the speech which I happily accepted to give him equal chance of Projecting himself. At first He felt a little uneasy facing huge crowd, but after a little encouragement from me he did a pretty good job and we ended up collecting handsome amount from this session.
Continuing our efforts we successfully completed our target of Rs. 50,000 by the end of the month. This whole experience was very helpful and always reminds me the importance of teamwork and coordination. I have also learnt that leaders can change everything if they have the passion towards their vision. As a young leader, I have good accomplishments. Now I am looking forward for Chevening scholarship that will bring me one step closer to my vision of revolutionizing the public sector governance in Pakistan.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 15461 Qamar, there is no need for you to define what leadership and influencing means to you. This essay is about proving that you have the leadership traits and influencing skills that Chevening is looking for in a candidate. It is not a definition of terms test or essay. So the first paragraph of your essay should be removed. It is not required and irrelevant to the discussion. It is irrelevant because your definition of leadership will not matter if you do not embody it through your actions. Begin instead with paragraph 3. The World Food bank experience.
The reason why I suggest using that paragraph to kick off your essay is because it highlights your leadership character. You show that you are able to command people to accomplish a task. However, the influencing part is not very strong because you only presented an enumeration of the work that needed to be completed, without explaining how influencing skills had to be used in order to get the team member interested in his work. Having a conflict that needed to be resolved in this instance would have worked very well to add substance to your explanation.
The speech at Punjab University is another superfluous presentation that merely diverts the attention of the reviewer. Avoid doing that because you want him to focus on only story that combines both explanations into a series of connected events. The speech story is too short, not well developed, and does not add anything of note to the essay. Therefore, it should be omitted in the final version of your essay.
Your closing paragraph is good. It ties the whole narrative together. It is usable. The only thing that worries me about this essay is that it is not related to a professional experience, which is what Chevening is all about. Most of the applicants who have successfully gotten into the program with my help usually have tremendously strong professional leadership and influencing abilities. They are normally people of notable professions and leadership positions in their country. I view your essay as a bit too amateur in presentation for the Chevening program. However, I can understand if you do not have any professional leadership experience to present yet, community leadership and influencing, provided it is done in present time or the not too distant past is also acceptable.
You mentioned the Go Green Project of the WWF at your office. It sounds to me like you led the project and had to manage (influence) a team right? If you can write an essay focusing on your leadership and influencing skills within that project, I think you will have a stronger chance of creating an essay that can stand up to professional comparison when compared to the other applicants. However, if you feel that your WFB experience is better and that is what you want to present, then so be it.
Thank you so much for giving such detailed evaluation I really appreciate your help. I think you are absolutely right I am going to write about Go Green Project. I will paste that essay as well for your feedback. Thanks a lot once again! God Bless You !
Hey qamaradeel, I think you have the examples to make an essay shine, what I think could help is to review you vocabulary and writing, if you have a friend or teacher that writes very well in English, ask for their help. For example when you say "This whole experience was very helpful"... helpful to what? maybe the word you were looking for is "rewarding", the right words and sentence structure will improve the way you deliver what you are trying to communicate.
Good luck!
